


Desheret

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Erotica, Harry Potter Next Generation, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Wizarding Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2018-10-27 18:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10814589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: The time has come. It has been a hundred or three hundred years I have waited for a son to take. This chamber will be reopened. I feel magic swirling near me… masculine, one of strangers.+ +An unlikely narrator recounts one of Bill Weasley's curse-breaking assignments in Egypt.





	Desheret

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** __  
> 

  
Author's notes: _This story was a gift for MrsQuizzical on LJ._  


* * *

Desheret  
By RedSioda

 

I.

I am Anat, daughter of Ammon, son of Amehnemet, son of Pepi, son of Imhotep, son of Menes.

I am the only child my father has engendered, despite his adulterous attempts to create sons by being intimate with many fertile women.

My mother died from grief. She was not a clever woman. My father explained to me that she did not understand the need for man and woman to experiment pleasure as often as possible. She could not fathom the importance of ancestry, of preserving life and magical arts through blood and celebration of flesh. She valued the vague emotion of love before the pleasures and luxuries skin rouse. The moist power women have over men eluded her. My father often questioned himself how a woman like me could be born from her womb.

“How can you be, Anat? How can you be?” he had murmured when he’d watched me succeed in creating a spell that made men forget hours of their simple lives.

I am his daughter. I inherited his power and intelligence. Oh, to hold in my hands again the unrelenting will of Ma’at! One day, I will touch again the subtle powers of the gods.

I am a sorceress, although I am my father’s doom as well as my grandfather’s and my great grandfather’s. I am the plague that ended a long lineage of formidable and great wizards, all of them men, who could alter life and provoke death. These men held the souls of gods in their hands. They had the power to summon the desert, to send great and bloody gusts of wind to suffocate enemies. With a flick of their wands, they could bury spies alive in the inscrutable sands of my mother, my true mother Egypt, and for the traitors they reserved the most dishonouring fate by transforming their flesh into stone and depriving them from a proper repose.

Because my male ancestors touched the gods, they were dusted with their powers. They made the sun rise higher in the sky so it could burn the ones who did not believe that they could indeed be burned. I am what Father wanted me to become. In my former life as a woman, I had mastered secrets that men would have traded their wives to obtain… They would have betrayed their sons or perhaps killed their fathers to possess the knowledge I had.

I had powers that reduced men to slaves.

II.

My spirit is intact in the confines of this precious recipient my father chose for me. This casing of porous rock in which my soul was offered to the mighty Set, the god of desert and chaos, has not altered the deadly blooming of my magic. This statue was the only way for me to exist within this world, and for my father to pursue his vengeance for centuries, long after he mourned my death, long after my beautiful and supple corporal form lost its gloss and became leathery from the rituals of embalmment.

I have accepted to exist between the afterlife and the lower life so I could take as many souls as Set will allow me to. I will avenge my father for not having sons by ravishing some of them to their fathers.

I feed from men and their vital energy. The splendour of the stone shelter my soul inhabits raises their fever to the point they think I am back from the land of the dead and breathing. They listen to the impetuosity of their lust when they accept the idea that I have become alive by their touch, that my skin exhales the sensual scents of myrrh and fenugreek.

My magic is potent and makes their flesh hard and impatient. When those who are astute or lucky enough pierce the enchantments of this chamber, I offer my thanks for freeing me from the spell that held me captive, and I agree to their carnal ministrations with much pleasure for I am the one who created their need– oh, the fools who ignore my cunning. I relish every second of their attention.

And what one barbaric treasure hunter called _la petite mort_ becomes their last breath. They die seeing the threshold of afterlife in my eyes.  
  
For each son I seduce, my magic becomes stronger, and my soul takes a step closer to becoming once again embodied in flesh and blood. One day, I will be walking on the hot sands of my mother Egypt, and I will pursue my services to the will of Set.

III.

I am carved with exquisite details, and I still bear the print of the lust and desire the artist had for me before he died at the hands of my father when he found him possessing me on the floor of his workshop.

My father had asked for a heresy, a work of art that defied the idea of beauty. He wanted the statue without jewellery, without clothes, my hair flowing on my back, my whole body open to the eyes of admirers. My father had to accept the refusals of many great artists who judged his request injurious to Thoth.

The artist who finally agreed to the order requested to be alone with me when he worked. He was a young man with talent but not much discipline. He pretended he needed to feel the pulp of my breasts, to tongue their tips, and to dig his fingers into the flesh of my buttocks to carve them accordingly.

He was indeed right; no other artist could have carved accurately the slope that leads to my breasts nor the aggressiveness of their tips if he had not tasted them or followed them with his hands. It made the statue familiar. I suspect my receptacle reminds men of the exciting moment when they discover skin that is soft and vulnerable as powdery sand.

The young artist did complicate his work by showcasing my naked body in such a way one would think it would step down its pedestal and live. The smooth surface of it is now slick from the contact of many hands throughout time. I have accepted so many of them grazing my bosom, slipping on my buttocks, cupping the mound between my legs.

Callused, damp, hard, soft, limber, delicate, powerful, indecent, respectful…so many souls, so many bodies against mine through the centuries.

But only one survivor, my spirit and its insatiable thirst for living.

IV.

The last man who dared to touch me was an explorer from the north, a lower form of man. A man with not much magic and imagination; this I quickly understood through his deceptive embrace. His wife did not make him understand the importance of learning sensual pleasure and exaltation. It was easy to lure him to me. He could not tear himself away from this chamber that became his tomb as well as it is my soul’s temporary resting place.

In a way, I saved his wife from a life of a misery. I do hope the man who replaced him between her legs was more proficient.

I do wish for my next lover to be tastier.

 

V.

The time has come. It has been a hundred or three hundred years I have waited for a son to take. This chamber will be reopened. I feel magic swirling near me… masculine, one of strangers.

Most pleasing it is. Not a feminine or intuitive one.

This time, Set cajoles me to take an adversary worthy of my power, one that could make me truly alive so I can pursue his work of chaos upon the world. For this to prevail, I need a man with vibrant magic in his soul.

There are two men working on the entrance of the trap that is laid for them to be caught. I sense the old magic being invoked and its titillating strength and precision. One of the men is very old. His magic is supple and harmonious, but he knows about the darkest turns of the human heart. He knows too much about love to succumb to my ploy.

But the other one, oh, the other one…

His magic pleases me – where does this man come from? He is young but already wise in his control of it. Each spell he takes away from the chamber’s door is the careful and calculated work of an astute combination of spells.

This magic I know… because I created it.

The door opens in a thunderous crack, and here they are, amazed and panting from their efforts, remnants of spells echoing in the darkness.

“Wow,” murmurs the young wizard. He expresses himself in a lower language, one I have heard before taking the life of one of its speakers. The young man walks in and from his wand bolts out a light I have not seen in centuries.

And I can see him clearly. This one I will take as my lover and he will give me life.

VI.

“I can’t believe it!”

His chuckle betrays his excitement. His head is wrapped in a pale fabric that shows sweat stains, and he wears a tunic over what I understand is a form of leg wear. His arms are slender but muscular, and his skin shines from paleness. Is he a prince of some sort?

Or maybe the man was trained as a wizarding warrior? A claw of a beast that was deadly in its living incarnation dangles from his ear. The wizard is young, but his imprint bears the marks of potent power. I wish I could arch my back a bit more. I hope he would stop looking at the drawings on the walls of this chamber to let his imagination being perverted by my image.

He is tall, and I dislike not having more advantage on him from my pedestal. When he stares at me with eyes as blue as those lapis-lazuli stones that used to adorn my mortal body, I have to hold in my powers and not give out my presence.

I need the old man to leave. I need the young prince vulnerable, alone with his feelings of solitude, his lust, and his hardening sex.

In the meanwhile, his humanity makes my starved soul twitch from want. He observes me from below the cube of granite, as the curves of my body finally receive his attention. “And there we meet. Anat the Sorceress.”

The old man walks to him, a wide smile under his moustache. “Indeed she is. Your idea for containing the snakes when we entered the tomb was inspired spell work...I’m proud of you, Bill. Soon you’ll lead the treasure hunts by yourself, and you’ll be showing your tricks to this old man.”

The said Bill, the warrior prince, laughs with abandon. “Oh no! I’ve got so much to learn, Ammi Msrah. The snakes were quite a lucky guess. “

“Not lucky.” The old man scolds him with gentleness as he scrutinizes the elaborate art on the painted floor of my trap. “The best curse breakers know how to merge their knowledge of ancient history and magic. Recognizing the intentions of Anat the Sorceress through this spelled snakes’ pit was a good intuition.”

“When the first cobra slid towards us, I wasn’t so sure,” the young man admits. “But I remembered the drawings of Meretseger we found on Anat’s spell parchments.”

My future lover is humble. I can already taste his innocence. The freshness of his mouth will be like the honeyed water I have been yearning to drink for centuries.

The Bill man smiles as a bag made from thick cloth falls on the ground. “She who loves silence. Rather fitting for a tomb.”

“That’s why Silencing the snakes instead of Stunning them was a brilliant stroke of your said luck,” teases the old man. He walks around me with paternal pride in his step. “Wonderful job! You will be rewarded. The Goblins have been trying to recuperate the Knife of Judgment she is rumoured to have stolen from their ancestors.”

“I hope they’ll be generous. I’ve been on this hunt for two months now. But the Knife won’t come to me easily.”

The named Bill unrolls the fabric from his head. A flow of fire falls on his shoulders, and my curiosity is unbearable. He has red hair. He is son of Set. He is a challenge from the gods.

He studies the shape of my prison with interest and genuine admiration. “This is unexpected,” he adds, his eyes following the perfect curb of my breasts. “This statue…it doesn’t look Egyptian to me.”

Oh, do I wish for his life, as I sense through the sweeping look he gives me how he desires women! He is not alike those lower men who expect submission and immobility from the woman they service with their sex. My prey wants his woman to arch under him. He appreciates her power, and he wants her to say words that will get him to the edge. The young prince of Set is a thinking man who needs more from a woman than her body to arouse him.

The old man nods. “I agree. This statue is highly unusual. This carving here,” and he points to the careful work left by Father on my left ankle, “tells us that its artist didn’t live very long after crafting it.”

“I’m somewhat not surprised about that. Anat had lots of blood on her hands,” sighs the Bill man, his eyes still on the hard peaks of my nipples.

“Oh, you know the legend like I do…According to old wives, beautiful and deadly Anat isn’t resting peacefully. They believe her magic was so potent it survived through the millenaries, and she still haunts the bedrooms of Memphis…They would swear to you that she possesses women so they become sexually insatiable, leading their husbands to die between their legs.”

Bill clicks his tongue as he reaches into his bag for a heavy set of parchment. “That’s a rather simplistic way of explaining crimes of passion, I reckon. I’m more afraid of the lingering magic in this room than of the ghost of a possibly nymphomaniac witch.”

“Ah, if my wife were!” The old man giggles. “Seriously, Bill, you are young. You know nothing about passion yet.”

I pulse from the slight aggressiveness I feel in the young man’s words. “Don’t want to brag here, but -“

“I’m not referring to the arousal of occasional encounters with a beautiful woman,” the man says quietly. A subtle tinge of red creeps to the cheeks of the younger man who dissimulates his trouble by scurrying into his bag, his features seemingly unfazed.

The old man stares at the hieroglyphs that line the chamber. “The delicious moment where one forgets about herself and her lover…this moment where there are no more limits between she and he, and nothing in the world makes sense but their commonalities…”

I catch the younger man’s quick glance to the slick mound at the confluent of my legs. “Quite eloquent today, Ammi?”

The old man smiles. “I wish. These words somehow live on the walls of this chamber.”

The young man casually sits on the ground of the chamber, flipping the pages of his collection of parchments. “Strange. She was a cruel but brilliant woman who did not have anything but her interest for her magic, according to everything I’ve researched about her. Seems rather cold-hearted to me.”

“See how young you are, Bill.” The old man observes the firmness of my buttocks with nostalgic longing. “You spontaneously link passion to fire and love.”

The young man’s silence that follows is a perfumed sweet. I hear the subtle sound of blood rushing to his loins. “Passion is a violent feeling. It’s devouring,” the young man says, leaving his parchments for a second to tie back his hair. He adds with good humour and a wink, “But then, what do I know about it, as you say, since I’m too young?”

“Not too young to have an idea about its taste, though.” The old man shakes his head, bemused.

The red-haired man is perfect: his ingenuousness makes me fear he will perhaps be too easy to submit.

He looks up at me, and he gazes right into my eyes of stone. “Anat was attracted by the dark arts as much as one can be.”

His wand traces a long strip of blue, and the air in the chamber shimmers from old spells and ancient incantations. “The statue seems inoffensive, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I reckon we should abstain from touching it as long as I don’t understand thoroughly the magic emanating from it. It’s very beautiful, though.“

“Do you think this statue represents how Anat wanted people to see her, or how she really was?” the wise man questions, a finger tapping his chin.

I will wait. Set’s son has much magic to bring me to life and to feed my soul for many centuries.

VII.

The seduction of the young prince has begun, and I am sorry to acknowledge that my patience will know new boundaries because of him.

He works differently with magic than did the ones I have already ravished through time. Instead of staying alone in the chamber with me for many days and gradually losing his mind over my stance and the sensual appeal of my beauty, he keeps me company for hours and leaves me to my solitude and my pulsating core.

My anger rises. I have to work harder on him. I foolishly believed that he had the energy of young men that think not so hard with their head, but with the bit of flesh that is of uttermost importance for them. I thought he could not help himself but to touch me like others did.

This one is different. His passions take the path of his brain first, before they expand in his body.

Bill, the one with the name I know nothing about, writes and reads and stares at the walls for hours, in silence, in a pitiful attempt to recuperate my treasure. “Accio Knife of Justice,” he attempts, and my spirit laughs madly.

When he is in my arms, listening to the urgency of his lust, he will forget all about it. The Knife is safe when I am of stone.

One day, he stares at me.

And he stares at my curves from that moment on, when he dares to share my chamber.

I will possess you, son of Set.

VIII.

Two voices crash the solitude in which I revel.

“I’d like to bring everyone here, but since I’m not sure about the statue –"

“No worries, I’ll keep my hands in my pockets.”

Bill stands in the threshold of the chamber. To his side, a young man whose flaming red hair makes him look brutal in his manners stares at me, wide-eyed. “So that’s the girl you’ve been seeing.”

“Git.” The two young men have familiar souls that live side by side. Brothers, they are. “Meet Anat.”

“Hey, Anat. Impressive tits.”

The insolent one is very easy to manipulate. It would not take much for me to lead him to bend me forward. If Bill leaves, I will claim his brother and devour his soul. His hands itch to slip on the stone. This young man is painfully simple in his desires. Him I could see bolstering about his stamina and hardness.

Not every conquest has to be complicated. This one makes me hungry for a quick seduction.

“I have to say, Charlie, you have class.”

“I’m pulling your wand, geek.” The two young men enter the chamber, and I am surprised by the raw physical strength of the younger brother. I am not one to appreciate the unsubtle ways of brutish men, but this youth has appeal.

“So what’s the deal with her?” the named Charlie says, plopping himself down to the ground and hungrily detailing my naked form. “Is that the treasure you’ve been obsessing about?”

“I’m not obsessing,” Bill scoffs. “I want to find the Knife. There’s lots of Galleons and a week paid vacation for me if I hand it to the Goblins.”

“Yeah, but two bloody months…that’s obsessing in my book.” The Charlie man rolls his eyes. “Where do you think it is? Not many nooks and crannies around.”

Bill sits down to his side, leaning back against the wall. “No. I searched the room for magical concealments, but nothing. I’ve neutralized every spell from this room. The only magic left is the one that comes for this.”

He points to me. His brother whistles between his teeth. “From the statue? Could the Knife be in it?”

Bill shrugs. “Maybe.”

“So you’ve been living for two months in this chamber with the statue of a naked woman,” pensively says Charlie. “That might explain your very boring life and your poor tan.”

“Curse breaking is my life right now.” His blue eyes gauge me. “There’s something with this statue.”

“I’d say. She’s bloody hot. Can’t blame you for wanting to look at her all the time. What do you do, all this time alone with her?”

“It’s a statue.”

“A statue of a naked woman.” The young man chuckles. “With tits like-“

“You don’t see many naked women, do you?” Bill interrupts dryly.

Is this the tinge of longing I was hoping for? Is his sudden move forward the indication that I might I have caught up with him?

“More than you did in the last two months, I reckon,” retorts his brother, full of swagger, dimples in his cheek. He pensively stares at me, and I hear him swallow. “It looks like it could come alive any minute.”

“Yeah.” This time, Bill laughs with unease. “I’m relieved you feel it too. I think I’m going mad.”

Silence welcomes his declaration, and his brother frowns, inciting him to speak his mind. The eldest spurts out, “Charlie, I’m not mad.”

“I reckon that’s not what you should say first.”

Bill wrings his hands. His vulnerability is a balm for all my efforts. I have not worked my magic in vain. “Ok…see, I’ve been trying to understand why this statue’s in this chamber. There’s no tomb, the statue doesn’t look like funeral art. It’s naked and it’s not common for Egyptian art to depict bare women without symbolic clothing or jewellery.”

“And why do you think you’re losing it?”

“Because I feel it’s got a will of its own.”

His brother nods. “Yeah…I could understand why. I got to say, it’s very well done.”

The said Charlie gets to his feet and walks to me, his mouth agape as I feel his lecherous gaze swirl on my body. This one I hold in the cusp of my magic. “The stone looks really smooth. I’d fancy touching it, just to feel if it’s warm like skin, y’know.”

“Don’t. I still don’t know what’s the nature of the spell lingering on it.” Bill approaches him, his eyes not leaving his brother’s hand.

Charlie sighs. He shifts his weight from a leg to the other, and I know what possesses him to do so. “Maybe that’s the thing, Bill. Maybe you’ve got to stroke it really nicely, and it will give you whatever you want.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Bill concedes.

The young brother is mine. His fever rises and his head slowly tilts back. He knows what I could give him, and he ignores what I will ask for in return.

“I like to touch women,” Charlie whispers to me, his fingers reaching for my thigh, wanting for me to hear his fantasies. His desires are moving, in their own brash ways. “I like to slip my fingers between their thighs and then suck on-“

“What makes you think I want to know about that?” Bill scoffs as he grabs his wrist. “What’s the matter with you?”

But my attraction is stronger than the reprimand of a prudish brother. “I go mad watching them when they go down on me,” murmurs the young man, and this time, his brother pushes him from my reach.

Bill shakes him, and Charlie’s head hits the wall behind. “Will you keep it your trousers, for Merlin’s sake? What’s with you?”

Anger hardens the younger brother’s traits for a brief moment, and when red blazes on his face, I know that I have lost this soul.

Prince of Set, you are making me ravenous, be warned.

“I…er…I…” He looks down with haste. “I don’t know…shite…I…I need…I need to get… out of here.”

The sound of footsteps hurrying out does not disturb Bill from studying me again with attention.

I know that he thinks he can be stronger than me.

I have already won.

IX.

Oh, the perfect moment of this thinking man’s fall, the perfect pathway to his doom his stretched arm draws upon himself. The palm of his hand, warm and dry, pauses on the hardness of my midriff, and he follows it with the naiveté of one who does not knows yet the mix of fear and pleasure this caress brings to women.

He will never know.

His hand slips upwards to the curve of my waist, and I feel him quivering slightly as the pulp of his fingers graze the fresh stone.

“What’s your secret, Anat?” I sense his heart beating, hard. His soul mists up from the fear and the odd arousal I inspire him. I can read him as he is; my skin catches his longing.

He wishes for a woman with mystery, a woman that would not leave her clothing with indifference.

“Is that the thing? Will stroking you make me find the Knife?”

He leaves my skin of stone for a moment to haul himself up on the granite cube, and through my thick coating of rock, I feel his energy and determination rising.

He hesitantly caresses my arms from my hands to my shoulders with the back of his hands. The stone shield between us becomes thinner as his hands run down my back with lightness.

I hear the slight hitch in his breath before his fingers slip under my breasts, slowly, the palms of his hands attempting to cover as much stone as he may.

_Deliver me_

His fingers close convulsively on the tips of my breasts. “What?” he whispers.

_Help me out of this casing of stone_

When his hands delve down and encounter moisture, he instinctively brings himself closer to me.

His engorged sex cannot lie. I know he is mine.

 

X.

I take over his resistance with much persuasion. I convince him that he helps me every time when his fingers suddenly sink into my flesh: each enveloping stroke he rewards my body makes my skin more supple, more fragrant, and when his mouth meets my lips with much doubt, I feel his overwhelming amazement.

My mouth tastes like something he never tasted before. He did not know about the sweetness of honey and almond paste; he has never given much attention to the enrobing quality of olive oil. My tongue flows in his mouth, and I sense the growl rising in him as he buries his hand in my hair.

_I want to reward you_

“Oh.” His eyes hint what his body really wants.

My hands, now free from their forced immobility, help him out of the tunic he wears. My teeth graze one stiff nipple before my tongue follows the definition of his chest, and his hands bring my hips closer to his. “I want…I want the Knife.”

_The Knife? But I’m offering you more_

I believe that I am winning him inch by inch when my hands plunge into this strange leg wear he insists on wearing, only to feel him palpitating like a beating heart between my fingers. I work on him the talents I have mastered through my times, and I sense him weakening, bowing his head down as he presses his hand against mine.

“God,” he moans through a quick exhalation.

_There are no gods here  
Only magic and flesh_

Sweat beads on his chest as we engage into an exhilarating dance where hands rhythm the pace. His panting echoes in the chamber, and each feverish breath means I am getting closer to life. He sucks and licks on my breasts with undoubted relish, only to invoke the gods again when he discovers their taste. I see the madness catching up with him when he brings us down to the solid block of granite, and he helps me spread my legs for him to enter me. I smile when he lends his fingers first, opening slowly a way. He caresses me in an endearing manner, his teeth grazing his lower lip, his eyes closed.

_Open your eyes_

He lazily blinks. I will admit that his fever contaminates me when he gives himself two short strokes, and I push myself against him. I do not want to lose a second of his arousal.

His red hair blazes over his shoulder, his skin is the colour of the palest sand, the blue radiance of his gaze shines… He is Egypt’s red earth crumbling under my feet, my much-missed desheret. Set wants to please me through him. I am blessed.

“The door…I need to close the door.” His voice is muffled against my stomach as he dips his tongue into my navel.

_I need you to open every door_

His hand trembles as he reaches for himself. His stiffness grazes my moist flesh, and against me, I shiver from the anticipation of the kill.

“My brother…He’s out there.” His mouth twitches when I stroke him slowly. “I don’t want my brother to see me…to see us.”

I open my legs wider and buck against him to take him in all his length, but he, the _coward_ , has already slipped away from me, and he has spelled the door closed.

And then, this rebellious prey, this lowly ungrateful bastard with his manhood clearly showing how good and generous I was to him, points his wand at me.

XI.

As he hides his vulnerability in his ridiculous leg wear, he yells something, modern and obviously insufficient magic that does not touch me. I implore Ma’at to give me the strength to punish the unthankful rat, and the sphere of blue light that erupts from my hand is nothing as he has ever seen. I can tell by the way his mouth opens in astonishment.

The sphere hovers in the air for a second, hypnotizing him, and when it bolts at him, he barely manages to avoid it with a lucky spell that keeps him safe for the moment.

He dares to throw at me a curse much too unsubtle to even make me sneeze, and I demonstrate my superior powers by defying the earth as I suspend myself to the top of the chamber. At my request, Isis lends me the power to invoke scorpions as big as fists, and they emerge from the pedestal that I stood on for so long.

The young son of Set will be bitten and slowed down by the scorpions, and I will jump on him before his last breath. I will force myself on him. I will conjure pleasure and agony for him, even if he does not deserve it. He will die spilling his seed in me, whether he wants it or not.

There is an explosion of his power when he defies Isis by turning my work of doom into dust. His voice booms again into the chamber. _“Accio_ Knife of Justice!”

_You don’t deserve the Knife, lower man_

His gaze lashes me. “What do I have to do to deserve it?”

His next incantation makes my spirit boil with rage. How dare he use my magic against me? The thin slant of the whip snakes out of his wand, and it catches fire when he hurls it at me.

I scream from all of my soul when the white-hot whip bites into my borrowed shield, and I snarl with hate when he tugs on it, making me fall down to the pedestal.  
  
Ra gives me the power to blind him, but he uses a potent magic to make it fade away like a sunset.

I invoke powers that he knows nothing about.

Wind rises in the chamber, and I sense him weakening as he has to shield his eyes from the sand littering the ground. A rock hits him in the face, and I hear him breathe quickly as he wipes the blood from his nose.

Snakes fall from the ceiling of the chamber in long, viscous rain. I jump down the pedestal, and the powers given to me by Meretseger protect me when his wand slashes the air.

His mouth is paling, air is leaving him, and he still has in himself the rage to insult me by shouting a spell. I deflect it with a lazy hand movement.

Pain sears me when his thoughts implode in my casing of flesh as he looks into my soul.

_She who loves silence_ , his mind whispers. I smile.

_Accio Knife of Justice_ , his mind commands.

The Knife bursts from my womb without blood, for I am not alive but living nonetheless, and we both stare at the precious object glistening on the floor with surprise.

The spell that goes through me is like ice, freezing my intentions, numbing my powers, and he is now standing above me, his hair wild and painfully vibrant to my old soul, sand dusting his bare torso, his lips red from blood.

He towers me as I lie to the ground, suddenly feeble, cold, shrinking from the loss of the power of the Knife.

_Would you kill a woman, young prince of Set?_  
  
There is no hesitation in the expert twist of his wrist when he explodes my magic in too many pieces to count and I float in pain, everywhere and everyplace before I feel myself disappearing into the dreaded afterlife.

Set, my beloved master  
the only god that I have ever feared  
why do you punish me

XII.

He tugs on his trousers with tiredness, his fingers quivering as he misses a button. Without thinking, he wraps the knife into his abandoned tunic, and his voice tremors when he spells the door open. He jogs away from the chamber, feverishly following the corridors that will lead him to the light, the stones scratching the skin of his back as he slides himself against them.

Sun leads him to shut his eyes when he erupts out. “Bill? Shite…what happened to you?” The heat smothers his shoulders, and Charlie stands, red-faced, his hand cast over his eyes. “Did you feel the earthquake?”

Bill shakes his head and accepts the gourd his brother hands him. Charlie points to the crumpled tunic with his chin. “What’s in there?”

The Knife glitters from the scorching sun. Charlie exclaims, “You got it? How d’you managed it?”

“I owe you one.” Bill hides the Knife in layers of linen without looking up to his brother. “You said that stroking it could be the trick.”

“Stroke it? You mean, you…” Charlie pauses. His embarrassment is palpable. “Look, I don’t know what happened to me in there... I’m not used to this heat, I reckon.“

“It’s okay, mate.” Bill wipes his face. “I stroked it.”

Charlie chokes on a gulp of water. “You touched the statue?”

Bill keeps silent. Teasing and shame are fighting on Charlie’s face. Some things will have to remain a secret, Bill decides. How could he explain the feverish rise of his arousal? How could he explain the logic of being ready to forgo everything for an intense romp with the soul of an ancient sorceress until he was reminded the words of old Ammi Msrah when he felt with his fingers the coolness of her juices?

A spell or a secret wish?

You link passion with fire and love, his mentor had said. Bill’s good sense saved him as it screamed for him to stop, to move away. It took everything he had. The need for the warm tightness of a woman who wants him, oddly, is still there, pulsating in his lower stomach, in spite of the horror.

He had promised himself he would not root himself to Egypt, and now, he wants to take in everything it has to offer.

He lets out a strangled sigh. “It’s not just any statue, you said it yourself,” he spurts out, impishly swatting his brother’s shoulder.

He knows when lying is mandatory.

His wink is forced, his heart flutters, but Charlie’s sunny grin shows that he has not felt his pain. “Didn’t you notice, Charlie? It’s a statue of a naked woman.”

 

 

The End


End file.
